longgren@...:
>Bomhard's THE NOSTRATIC MACROFAMILY
>page 253 "Proto-Nosrtratic *p[h]ir-/*p[h]er- (?) 'house'
Gasp! Why is it always the painfully baaad reconstructions that get quoted?
I have severe trouble with this one. Within the IE evidence, there is only
Anatolian. I have read Piotr's explanation of the etymology of pir-/parn-
and it would seem that there are some mysteries yet to be resolved, as I
suspected. The rest of these "cognates" found in Dravidian and AA are
tempting to imagine as inherited items but I'm getting the creepy feeling
that there is a wanderwort lurking in the midst. I don't want to sound
overly obsessed on my early neolithic sea network idea but the word could
easily have been spread to many language families this way in a short amount
of time.
I know of another tasty connection regarding "house". Etruscan /par, parnix,
parxis/ appears to continue to defy exact translation. It would be fun to
translate /par/ as "house". Hmm, that might make /zilch parchis/ "head of
the house".
Might I suggest the following events starting c.5500 BCE for idle fun:
preEgyp *per -> Tyrrhenian *per -> MidIE **per "house"
|
V
[mysterious intermediate lg.]
|
V
HurroUrartian /*pur-/
Then, preEgyp *per somehow becomes *paruw, Tyrrhenian *per becomes Etruscan
/par/ in regular fashion, and MidIE **per dies out of use after Anatolian
splits except for derivatives like *prio- and *priax-.
>Proto-Nostratic *p[h]al-/*p[h]el- 'settlement, settled place'
I don't fall for this desperate reconstruction. This item is certainly a
combination of coincidences and wanderwords. I wonder if Etruscan /spur/
"city" might relate to this. The word surely never existed in Nostratic
itself. Afterall how does a hunter-gatherer society living 17,000 years ago
manage to preserve a word for "settlement" so well?? Let's start thinking,
people. Throw away *p[h]al-, it's an illusion.
- gLeN
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com